A great many different types of minimally invasive treatment and diagnostic procedures are used in human patients. Techniques for percutaneous access to the cardiovascular system to enable the placement of stents and filters for embolization procedures, infusion of thrombolytic agents, and for still other purposes are well known. A typical percutaneous procedure involves accessing a body lumen to be treated by way of an opening formed in the patient's skin. Once access into a body lumen is achieved, a physician typically manipulates treatment or navigational devices from a location outside of the patient to advance through the body lumen until a target location for performing a procedure is reached. Accessing certain body lumens or portions thereof in this manner is relatively routine. Placing filters and other devices within certain relatively larger vascular lumens such as the inferior vena cava or the superior vena cava, for example, is considered relatively straightforward. Access to deeper portions of the cardiovascular system, and by way of smaller and more tortuous vascular lumens such as those perfusing internal organs or located deep within a limb and relatively far from the access opening, tends to be substantially more time consuming and difficult.
A variety of different guiding devices, commonly in the form of wire guides, are well known and widely used for many different intraluminal procedures. In one typical example, a wire guide is passed through the vascular lumen to a location of interest, often with the assistance of radiography, by way of various turns and branches within the body lumen. A flexible and often curved tip of the wire guide facilitates navigation to a location of interest. A catheter or other treatment mechanism can then be advanced over the wire guide, following its path through the body lumen, and navigating through turns, branches, or other features in a way facilitated by the already placed wire guide. Over decades of practical application of this general technique, technological advances in the design and use of wire guides, catheters and the like have enabled physicians to perform procedures within or near increasingly difficult to access portions of body lumens. Despite such technological advances, various portions of body lumens remain beyond reach, or considered impractical to attempt to navigate.